Black Dog(45)

She remembered when Mamá had explained about the blood of the Pure, about what the blood kin did with Pure women when they caught them. “Pure blood to break Pure working,” Mamá had said. She had been showing Natividad the pentagrams on the village church: on the windows of blue and pink glass, on the carved wooden door, and on every individual stone at a woman’s shoulder height, inside and out. Those stones were head-high for Natividad, who had been about eight. She had reached up to lay her hand on the stone nearest the door. The stone was warm under her hand, only it wasn’t really warmth, but a good feeling like warmth.

“Grandmamá and Tía Maria drew all those stars,” Mamá explained. “And I and Tía Maria did the mandala around the church yard. This church is the safest place in Potosi. But always remember, a vampire can shatter even our protections if they pour our lifeblood out over our mandala or across the threshold of the church. You must never let the blood kin catch you alive, Natividad, because they will use your death against the innocent if they can.”

Natividad had shivered.

“Do not be afraid. I will show you a better place to hide if they come,” Mamá told her, and took her to the live oak standing inside the circle of young pines. “Twenty-one pines and one oak,” Mamá said. “You may not wish to hide in the church, Natividad: that is for innocent people and children, but there are some things you may do better if you are here and not in the church.” Mamá looked down at Natividad and sighed. “Someday soon I must show you…”

Natividad didn’t understand. She was puzzled by that sigh and by something else in her mother’s tone, something she did not understand. “Mamá, are you sad?”

“No, no, mia hija. No, I am not sad. Only… No, never mind. Put your hands on the tree. Do you feel the pentagrams I carved into the wood when you were born? Also there is a saint’s finger-bone buried among the roots. Saint Louisa’s bone, they say it was. My Great-grandmamá buried it there when she planted the oak. If you must hide quickly, come here for safety. With Alejandro. Come here with your brother if you can. A tangle of shadows can hide you from any who would do harm to you, whether your enemies are blood kin or black dogs.”

Natividad had not understood how shadows could tangle up, or which shadows were supposed to. And when Vonhausel had come with his shadow pack to kill them all, Alejandro had not been at home: he had been miles away, hunting in the desert near Hualahuises, hunting under the moon. She had run to the oak all by herself, through the smoke rolling down the mountain from the burning village. She had tucked herself down in among the oak’s heavy roots where they heaved out of the gritty soil, and no one… no one had found her, all that night.

She swallowed, pulling herself, with brutal effort, out of unbearable memory. She rubbing her eyes hard with the back of her hand and looked quickly around the table, trying to be subtle, hoping no one had noticed her sudden struggle with tears.

James was looking grim, and his younger brother Benedict a little bit scared, or maybe confused, or maybe both. Ezekiel was sardonically unreadable, an expression Natividad was sure he practiced in front of a mirror. Keziah looked contemptuous and bored and sexy – she probably practiced that in front of her mirror. Every day, probably. When Natividad accidentally met her eyes, her lip curled, and she looked away again with ostentatious indifference, but at least she didn’t seem to think anything odd about Natividad’s own expression. Her little sister Amira had drawn her legs up and tucked herself back in her chair, trying to be unnoticeable. Grayson tapped one finger gently on the table, frowning with a heavy grimness he probably didn’t have to practice.

Zachariah, oldest of them all, looked calm and a little abstracted, with a faintly self-derisive edge to his mouth – he was thinking, probably, of those difficult days: murder and secrecy and a Master he hated, or at least didn’t trust; the sort of Master who would let an ambitious Dimilioc black dog get away with killing a Pure woman. He said, “Harrison and I might have taken Thos down right then, if we’d worked together. We did think of it. It would have saved us all a good deal of grief if we’d done it. But everything calmed back down after Edward and Malvern both disappeared, and Thos consolidated his hold, and we lost the moment.”

“If you had tried to fight him then, Thos would have killed you both,” Grayson said, dismissing this putative failure with a curt gesture.

Ezekiel leaned back in his chair, a casual movement that nevertheless gathered all eyes. He said, “So, I’m sure this is all very interesting, but now we must wonder what light Edward’s sons might be able to shine on all this ancient history.” He lifted an eyebrow at Alejandro.